Jonathan Groff Quotes

My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion.

I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film.

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this there's certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

I tend not to be so attracted to films that force me into an intellectual place over an emotional one.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.

Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film.

My films start with images, a few images and a few feelings, and I try to edit them together to see the correspondence between these images and these feelings.

I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.

What I like about film is it explores imperfections.

'Piku' was driven by subtleties. Most films come with the padding of the sound, the visual, the drama.

My personal fave is 'The Japanese Wife', because I think I achieved a lot of what I wanted to do. I wanted that Japanese minimalism in the film, which I managed to get somewhat.

I don't think 'Lootera' is slow paced; it's finely paced for its setting and story.

'Twin Peaks' is like a movie; 'China Beach' is like a movie. These are two of the most cinematic shows on television, and they belong together.

'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.

I'll be honest: 'Badlands' changed my life: it really did rewire my brain as to how film can operate.

I would say that all my films have more content than a 'content-driven film.' It is not easy to make such films.

Within the mainstream cinema, I feel you can experiment and make sensible films. It's possible to tell a story with characters and emotions which are real, genuine, and which need not be over the top.

My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.

Art is about paying attention.

I mean, we should only be talking about the merits of film ["Moonlight"] because one of the great things about the visual language is that it is the great equalizer.

A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.